


how we live now, how we have always lived

by broi



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angry Sex, Banter, Dirty Talk, Fight Sex, First Time, Frottage, M/M, Oral Sex, POV Theon, Rimming, Sad Ending, Sex, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 20:35:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8071867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broi/pseuds/broi
Summary: Jon hates Theon. Theon hates Jon. It takes them both by surprise when they discover why.   “Careful, Snow. Talk like that will make me want to have a go at you right now.”  Jon released Theon’s hair with a yawn. “If you hadn’t fucked my cock nearly clean off, Theon, you know I wouldn’t stop you.”  Theon chuckled quietly, stretching back into Jon’s body. “You never call me Theon,” he observed.  “Up until recently I’d never fucked you, neither,” replied Jon. “This is just how things are now.”





	

Some many months had now passed, Jon supposed, since it had become normal between them – the way they lived now. Theon once asked him when he’d realised. Jon had said, “Realised what?” and Theon had rolled his eyes. 

“Have you a head injury, Snow?” He waved a finger backwards and forwards between the two of them. 

Jon flushed a deep pink. “Shut up.” After a pause, Theon’s expectant eyes upon him, Jon added, “I realised nothing. It was something always there, is all.”

“Aye, it was,” Theon had nodded. “Hatred, bitterness, a fair old lot of jealousy…”

“Greyjoy…” Jon’s voice was dark.

“You’d deny it, would you?” Theon folded his arms across his chest and smiled. Jon hated that look as much as he needed it. At feasts – at the clamorous tables so far from the Starks and from Theon that he couldn’t see their faces – he would close his eyes to silence the world and to live that look again. And most of the time, he hated himself for it.

“I’m not denying anything,” Jon had said quietly. “What do you want me to say?”

“It’s just that you’re usually so talkative, Snow, that I can’t get a word in edgeways.”

Jon had bristled at that. “Is everything a game to you?”

“Drowned _God_ , Jon.” Theon’s smirk had fallen from his face in a fleeting moment. He ran his hands through his hair. “Must you be so humourless? Even when you have everything you want, you’re sullen. Come now. You’ve a prettier face than to waste it turning milk.”

Jon hadn’t meant to upset Theon. These days it was no longer something he felt the need to do. He just found it difficult - Theon’s questions - and how he pushed and pushed him to explain, to dissect, to analyse. Whatever this was, _was_. And that was all Jon could say.

“I don’t have the answers you want.” Jon’s arms flopped hopelessly at his sides, a gesture of defeat. 

“Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?”

Jon’s grey eyes, dark in the candlelight but bright with the words he could not bring himself to say, bore into Theon’s. “Yes.”

“So explain.” Theon had uncrossed his arms, flung them open wide. “Come on, Snow. Explain how the bastard boy of Winterfell and the hostage Prince of the Iron Islands grew up hating the very bones of one another until that _one day_. Because, by the Gods, Jon Snow, I’ll be damned if I know. And you were the one who began it all."

Jon had felt himself seized with a sudden volition that he was unable to supress. His balled fist made contact with the wooden table, shuddering a great thud down its legs into the stone floor. “There was no realisation! No choice, no moment of clarity. Is that what you want to hear, Greyjoy? It had always been there, until it grew too big for the space inside me. Do you know how that feels? I hated you and hated myself for how much I wanted you. I hate myself even now. Yet, I hate you more.”

“But not as much as you want me.”

“ _Theon…_ ”

Jon had allowed Theon to kiss him then. It had not been like their other kisses – desperate, raw, peppered with bites and snarls and gasps. There had been no rivalry played out in this kiss, no rough-lipped, teeth-dragging battle for one to claim the other. Theon had placed his lips on Jon’s as his whispered name died out in Jon’s mouth, and for a moment Jon had not known what to do. He stood stiff as a maiden at her bedding as Theon’s touch, gentler than any of his words, slowly thawed him. And Jon knew – really knew, as before he had not dared to even think it – that they were both seriously in trouble.

**

Theon Greyjoy had always been an adept selective thinker. 

It suited him to discern the shapely tits and fine arse of Fanna – or was it Fenna? – that game kitchen wench with the filthy mouth, but it suited him less to look upon her pan-handle face as he fucked her, so he simply turned her around and told her that was how they did it on Pyke so he couldn’t get a bastard on her. Gods, she was dim.

It suited Theon to remind himself often that he was a Prince of the Iron Islands, noble-born and solid-hearted: a God, one may say, amongst men. It suited him to call himself a guest of the Starks, Robb’s brother in all but blood. It suited him less to even consider the word “ward”, or worse, _“hostage”_ , and so he behaved as though those words did not exist. Theon called Jon “bastard” as though it were his name, because it suited him to mark himself as equal to Robb. It suited him less to admit Robb never used that word himself. And it didn’t suit him at all to watch Robb offer his hand to help Snow from the dirt in Winterfell’s courtyard after Theon had knocked him to the floor in practice again.

“ _Get up, Jon_ ,” Robb would say. “ _Do it again. And again, and again, until you get better_.” 

“Why do you waste time on Lord Eddard’s bastard, Stark?” Theon had asked one afternoon. He was about fourteen summers old then, but it suited him to carry himself as though he was a man grown. He nodded at Jon across the courtyard, collecting Robb’s arrows where they’d fallen. Robb and Jon were around the same age, but Robb’s ten summers had brought him height and sense of mind greater than most other boys. Jon’s ten summers had not. 

“Jon’s my friend and my brother,” Robb had replied simply. “Why do you hate him so much, Theon?”

Theon had paused. After a while he’d replied, “Because it suits me.”

It suited Theon to go harder at sparring practice with Jon, just because he could. There was something about Jon’s angry, determined little face that spurred him on, made him almost need to hit him faster, fiercer. He liked the smear of dirt across Snow’s knees. He liked the tiny bloom of red at Snow’s nostril. 

It suited Theon less around Jon’s fifteenth name day when he began to hit back with equal, and then greater, strength and intensity. Jon’s angry, determined face never changed, but his grey eyes bore into Theon’s much deeper – sometimes, so much deeper that Theon had to look away – and it suited him least of all that it was these eyes that Theon saw when his own were squeezed shut, at night in the darkness when he handled himself, and it was Jon’s name he moaned in furious, dreadful weariness as he came. 

But thankfully, Theon Greyjoy was an adept selective thinker. With each sunrise so returned his derision for the bastard, and it suited him well to remember only how quickly he had fallen to sleep the previous night, as soon as he’d drawn himself up within his bed. Yes, it suited him very well. 

**

The first time Jon really scared himself was his sixteenth name day.

Of course, it probably hadn’t been his sixteenth name day at all. Nobody really knew when that was – a specific day, anyway - but Arya insisted that it could not pass unmarked and so had chosen the day herself. Jon remembered how he felt that morning: a curious mix of trepidation, boyish excitement, and dread. It had been exceptionally awkward at dinner the night before. Of course, Arya was far too little to understand what being a bastard meant past the clinical truth of the word: “ _Your mother is not my lady mother, is that right, Jon_?” Arya had made a face. “ _So what_?”

“He does not need a name day,” Lady Catelyn had said quietly. 

“Let the child have her fun,” Father had replied. Lady Catelyn’s eyes glowered in the candlelight, but she didn’t speak again. 

Jon had only been awake moments when Arya burst into the room, clutching something hidden within the folds of some elderly material. “I couldn’t wait,” she said breathlessly. “Sorry about the rag. Old Nan gave it me. I didn’t tell her what it was for. If I had, she might have given me a nicer one.”

Jon doubted that, but didn’t say so. 

“Well, go on!” Arya extended the bundle towards Jon.

Jon laughed, and --

(One night when Theon was lying between his legs, moonlight falling in a silver strip across his pale, slender thigh and narrow hip, Jon told him about Arya and the cloth and Theon said, “you only laugh with Arya.” Jon hadn’t realised that before.)

\--Jon laughed, and said, “What’s this? Not a nameday gift?”

Arya squeaked out a giggle and nodded ferociously. “Quick, Jon – open it. I’ve been waiting since the sun came up. It has been an age!”

Slowly, Jon unfolded the loose rag away from the treasure within. Nestling in the folds lay a tiny direwolf, carved near perfectly from a deep, mottled wood. For a moment he could not speak.

“Sansa told me it was stupid,” Arya went on, screwing her nose. “She said that I shouldn’t make you a direwolf because, well – because you’re a Snow and not a Stark, so I kicked her shin and the Septa’s face went the colour of that redcurrant jam that Rickon likes, and—”

“You _made this_?” Jon’s mouth felt suddenly dry.

Arya’s face fell. “Don’t you like it?”

“Seven hells, like it?” Jon turned it over in his hands and cursed, not for the first time, the fact that the Gods had neglected to fashion him with many words during his formative years. “Arya Stark, this is the very best thing I have been gifted in all my summers past.”

“I _told_ Sansa it was a good idea!”

Jon lifted it close to him, inspecting it further. “This carving work – Arya, it really is incredible. How did you get the fur on the legs to look so realistic? It must have taken you hours.”

Arya flushed pink. “I – well. Some bits were really fiddly, and to be honest I made three more before that one and threw them all in the pool in the Godswood because they were all as useless as the one before. The third, I snapped a leg off I was so angry with it. Oh, don’t laugh!”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, I had been in a furious temper because it was nearly your name day and I had nothing to show for any of my grand plans of the direwolf I wanted to make. And – and Sansa just looked so smug, as though she knew I couldn’t do it all along. I didn’t want to ask for help, but I was worried it would be your name day and you would go without, and that Sansa would smirk at me and I’d have to pull her hair and get into trouble, so in the end I had a bit of help with the legs. I did the head though, and the tail, which I think are the best bits. Who looks at the legs, anyway? I don’t know why he spent so much time on them; they’re not the head nor the tail.” Arya pointed to the carving in Jon’s hands. “See that leg there? After he showed me how he did the others – hours and hours I watched – he let me do that one. Don’t – don’t look at that splintered bit; look at the front. See? Nearly as good as the other three.”

Jon smiled. “Robb has taught you very well.” 

Arya frowned. “Robb? Theon helped me.” 

“ _Theon?_ ” 

Arya rolled her eyes. “Yes, _Theon_. Gods, Jon: are you still half asleep? He took an age to do it. And—” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh! I wasn’t meant to speak a word. Theon said to keep it quiet. Said if Winterfell’s girls knew he had any more talents, he’d never get a good night’s sleep? I didn’t really understand that, but he made me swear. Oh, seven hells!”

Jon’s heart hammered so fast he could feel it in his stomach. _Theon._

“Secret’s safe,” he said weakly, with a smile.

Whatever Arya said next passed over Jon in a haze of confusion, worry, and most suddenly, anger. This was Arya’s gift to him – his first and only name day present – ruined by Theon Greyjoy’s ever-better hand. And why had Theon insisted on dragging Arya into his relentless pursuit of Jon’s unhappiness? Nothing other than what suited Theon and his own gains: Jon’s one true ally at Winterfell, in Theon’s debt. And what had Theon helped Arya make, against any of her better knowledge? The one symbol of his estrangement and isolation: the direwolf he would never be.

“…and then I bet Bran half of his clay horses that he couldn’t eat all the apples out of that small barrel by the old log, you know, the one near Hodor’s place? So that’s why I’m avoiding Mother because Bran was sick and the Septa is in a furious temper with me, and Sansa called me a monster. A _monster!_ ” 

Jon somehow found his voice enough to cough out a laugh and said, “You’ve had quite the morning, Arya Stark.”

Arya paused, and looked hard at Jon. “Do you honestly like it? Your gift?”

Jon clutched the direwolf tightly in his hand. “More than I can say.” 

Satisfied, Arya left then, bounding off Jon’s bed and out through his chamber door, in search of her next adventure. _Sixteen summers, Snow,_ Jon thought. _What I wouldn’t give to shed a few, and be her age again._ It would certainly be easier. When he was eleven, all he cared about was growing strong enough to fight Theon levelly, equally. Each year rushed by in pursuit of the next, without a passing care for the present. And now, even when he can comfortably put Theon Greyjoy, Prince of the Iron Islands, mewling on his back like a babe, the Ironborn was still able to wrestle the upper hand from him. Jon’s quiet reticence had never been a match even for Theon’s smirk, which spoke a thousand words before his mouth was yet to open. 

And now there was this direwolf.

“I see you received your gift.”

Jon looked up in surprise. Theon stood in his doorway, leaning on the frame as though it was his quarters to own. How Jon wanted to wipe that smirk from his face.

“This is a bastard’s chamber, Greyjoy,” Jon said. “Last time I checked you weren’t a bastard. I wouldn’t step in lest you catch anything. Anything you’ve not got from your whores, at least.”

“And who, may I ask, has pissed on your fire this morning, Snow? It is your name day. Nobody should be surly on their name day.”

“If you’ve come to gloat, I’ll happily let my sword do the talking in the courtyard.”

Theon looked genuinely confused. “I haven’t come to gloat.”

“Then what are you here for?”

Theon paused. There was something about his demeanour that Jon didn’t quite recognise. A quiet hesitation, quite unlike Theon’s usual cocky performance. “Arya tried really hard with that carving,” he said after a while. “I wanted to see how it turned out.”

Jon said nothing. He turned the direwolf over and over in his palm. 

“You mean a lot to her, Snow.”

“Is that why you did this?”

Theon frowned. “Did what?”

Jon couldn’t look at Theon. He didn’t know why; he just couldn’t. Instead his eyes never left the direwolf carving; first its head, and then its tail, and then finally his gaze settled on its legs. 

“You used Arya to get at me.”

Had Jon been looking at Theon, he would have observed a twitch in Theon’s proud jawline; he would have discerned a slight fade to the colour in his pink cheeks. Instead, he only heard Theon’s words. “That, Snow, is a cunt thing to say.” 

“Tell me it isn’t true, then.”

Theon flushed. “It isn’t true.”

“So it’s a coincidence, is that it?” Jon stood from his bed and strode across to where Theon remained in his doorway. He held the direwolf up in front of the Ironborn’s face. “Arya will be punished for this if Lady Catelyn discovers it. Is that a coincidence? Arya is the most precious to me, reprimanded for trying to make me happy. A coincidence? And Arya, under your counsel, fashions a perfect direwolf for me: Winterfell’s runt bastard. A reminder of what I am not, and will never be, on a name day that is not mine. Tell me, Greyjoy: is that a fucking coincidence?”

“Yes, it is a fucking coincidence!” Theon’s voice raised almost to a shout. “Heavens forfend I actually wanted to help Arya!”

“Jealous of how she looks up to me and not you, is that it?” 

Theon stepped into Jon’s chamber. “You self-indulgent, sorry little rat,” he said. “You are so determined to hate me that you’re blind to every fucking thing around you.”

“And you are not? You’ve always hated me, Greyjoy, for being more Stark than you’ll ever be.”

Theon’s fury was palpable. “Then we are both doomed,” he said, “because any Stark blood you may have had was wiped off you the minute your whore mother shat you out of her cunt.” 

Jon didn’t know what happened immediately afterwards, but when he opened his eyes Theon was beneath him on his chamber floor, his face contorted in a red grimace of pain, and Jon was watching his own fist rise and fall towards him as his blood splattered onto the stones. How many times had he hit him? With great effort, Jon pulled his punch back and suspended it in mid-air. His breath tore through his lungs in angry shudders.

Theon coughed. A great string of blood and phlegm spattered across his chin. 

Jon rolled off Theon and onto his back. The two of them lay on the cool stone floor, their gasping breaths the only sound for what felt like an age. 

“I wanted – I wanted it to be perfect.” Theon.

“What?”

“The direwolf.”

Jon stared at the ceiling. “Why?”

“Because Arya wanted it to be perfect.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“No.” 

Jon was not permitted at supper that day. She didn’t care if it was his name day, Lady Catelyn had said, deaf to Arya’s pleas. _Behaviour like that was not befitting of anybody worthy of sitting at the Stark table. Jon Snow is not a Stark._

Instead of supper, he cleaned Theon’s blood from the grey slate in his chamber, but it left a dark stain. Jon had never been one for poetry, but even he could feel the stain on the floor spreading through the room like paint in water, staining his heart and his mind. Staining it with shame. 

**

Theon knew that it should be easier to think ill of Jon Snow whilst he still had to make his way around Winterfell wearing the improvements that Jon had kindly thought to make of his face. Girls love a few scars, a wonky nose. That’s what Finna or whatever her name was said when she was cleaning him up. _Makes ‘em look battle-hard_ , she’d said. _Nothin’ gets a girl wetter than a man who’s been in a fight or two._ He’d have to make up some tale, of course. It would not do to pull a whore into his lap and say, “my scars, milady? Well, a bastard boy put me on my back and smashed seven hells off my face.” 

A definite passion-killer if ever there was one.

Theon hoped that when the swelling went down he’d still be good-looking. Life was certainly easier when you were good-looking. Just take that poor bastard, Hodor. Fifteen rolls of fat for an excuse of a torso, and a shovelled dung pile of a face. Not to mention he was a dreadful conversationalist. He’d have to pay a blind whore triple rate if ever he wanted his cock seeing to, that was for sure. 

Not like Theon. The Prince of the Iron Islands. _Fuck – that hurt._ Theon pressed tenderly along his jaw. The bastard had dislodged one of his teeth. He’d have to get Maester Luwin to see to that, else it’d end up rotting out of his mouth and then he’d catch a fever and die, or something. Either that or he’d have a hard time fucking the prettier girls in the kitchen or at the whore house, as he’d look like something that had crawled out of the arse-end of Fleabottom’s sewers. So he might as well be dead.

Nevertheless, he had to hand it to Jon. Theon never thought he’d wind him up so much that he’d actually hit him. All talk and no breeches, was Snow. Well – little talk, and no breeches. The funny thing was, Theon really never meant for the direwolf to get under his skin. He’d seen Arya hacking away at the thing, cursing and stomping, and he’d only intended to carve out the basic shape to get her going. 

But then the more he did of it, the more he’d wanted to finish it. Theon didn’t like to leave a job half done. He did his duty, always finished girls off with his fingers if they’d played too precious to come off his cock. 

“Can I do the last leg?” Arya had asked, and Theon realised he’d completely lost himself in the task. Truth be told, he wanted to do the last leg himself. It was a nice thing, the carving, and for some reason he wanted Arya to be able to give Jon a nice thing. 

“Here, Stark. Let me show you,” Theon had said. “Little movements, like this. And soft. You’re not jabbing out a rat’s eye, for heavens’ sake.”

“But I like rats.”

Theon had sighed, only a little exasperatedly. “Just – just don’t go in too heavily. Wood is yielding, pliable. You need just a little nick."

“Like this?”

Theon smiled, which took him by surprise because he felt proud. He was used to pride, but this was a new pride. “Just like that. Not too hard, now. Be patient. It will be worth it.”

He had to be so stupid to go and see Snow in his chambers. He didn’t even know why he’d done it. Theon had helped Arya with the direwolf, and that was that. It had been her gift to give. And Theon should know by now that any attempt he’d make at a smile would come off as a smirk, because that’s what his mouth and brain seemed to set themselves to as default, particularly around Jon Snow. 

Theon probed gingerly just above his cheekbone. It hadn’t come up yet, but the sensation he felt told him it would be a particularly impressive black eye upon sunrise. _Smirk well and truly punched from your face, Theon Greyjoy,_ he thought. 

Black eye, black eye...he’d have to tell the kitchen girls that the Mountain clobbered him after he found Theon in bed with three – no, five – of his women. _Theon Greyjoy is too much man for us to handle, Gregor,_ he’d recount the women pleading. _We’ll have to come back to your cock, for a rest._

It hurt his face to chuckle, but he couldn’t help it. After all, he was a particularly adept selective thinker, and it suited him to make light of it all, this sorry and confusing and hideous mess, much more than it suited him to tell himself the truth about the bastard of Winterfell, and the yearning ache he felt in his stomach – worse than his face – whenever he merely thought the name _Jon Snow._

 

**

It had been driving Jon mad, the thought of it, and so it came to pass that he decided he needed to confront Theon to discuss things. Jon refused to even think the word ‘apologise’. Theon’s mouth had yet again engaged itself prior to his brain and for once he had been given the hiding that he had deserved for countless summers. Jon knew it. He would speak with Theon, they would be civil to one another, and then the strange and incessant ache of dread in Jon’s chest would be absolved. It would be simple. He would attend Theon’s chambers, request entry, and chase the whole thing from his mind.

He hovered outside Theon’s door for an age before he knocked it, opening it a crack to alert Theon to his presence. Theon was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, when he looked over and caught Jon’s eye. Immediately, his expression darkened. He looked away again.

“Don’t come in, Snow,” muttered Theon. “Lest you want to catch something off my many whores. The air’s thick with cunt-rot, did you know?”

“Stop it.”

Theon looked at him. “What do you want?”

Jon said nothing.

“To hit me again, perhaps? Why not go a little further this time, bastard, and kick my cock off?” 

“Listen, Greyjoy. I – I don’t know what happened that morning. You shouldn’t have said that about my mother.”

“Funny, I would have said that bothered you less than the comment about your Stark blood.”

Jon stiffened. “It’s – I – I should not have hit you. That is plain. But you really should control your low-born mouth.”

Theon raised an eyebrow. “As far as apologies go, you are doing a dreadful job.”

Jon fought every angry instinct within him not to bite back. Instead he said, “Well, can I come in?”

“Any contraction of cunt-rot is at your own risk.”

“Understood.”

“Is that a hint of a smile I see, Jon Snow? Are you unwell?”

“Shut up.” 

Theon motioned towards a chair, into which Jon placed himself. Jon didn’t sit, Theon realised; he perched, as though perpetually waiting to be tipped from his seat in favour of somebody more important. In his own chair, Theon stretched back languidly, spreading his legs wide apart. If he’d been a dog, he’d have pissed on the floor by now. _Theon Greyjoy’s territory._

“Tell me about the direwolf,” said Jon.

“Well, Snow, it is a beast larger in size than its more common cousin—”

“You know what I mean. Stop avoiding it.”

For just a fleeting moment, Theon froze. But then as quickly as it had come, so had it passed. “I told you. I was helping Arya. She’d have only gone and destroyed another if I hadn’t stepped in. The child would have caused somebody an injury, the way her temper was flaring.”

“And the other reason?”

Theon’s voice was flat, unemotional. “What.”

“When I – when we lay in my chambers. You said Arya was not the only reason.”

“You’d just rattled my brain like seeds in a husk, Snow. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

Jon’s eyes, that infuriating, unsettling grey, bore into Theon’s the way that Theon had specifically told himself had no effect on him. He became aware of his collar at his neck, and the thin film of sweat collecting there. 

“It will not leave my thoughts or my dreams,” said Jon quietly. “And I do not know why.”

Theon wanted to say, guilt? Do you relive what it felt like to pound my face into the slate? What do you feel, Jon Snow? Shame? Exultation? _Alive_?

“I’m not responsible for your thoughts or dreams, Snow.”

Jon paused. The internal struggle he underwent played out only vaguely on his face. “Why give me the direwolf if you hate me, if not to mock me?”

Theon met Jon’s eyes and he did not look away. “Because it suits me to hate you.”

“Why?”

Theon shook his head.

Jon’s mouth felt suddenly dry, like it always did when the swell of feelings he did so well to suppress bubbled up towards the surface. Like it did when Arya gave him the direwolf. Like it did the first morning he saw Theon after he had beaten him. Like it did every time Theon had put him on his back in the dirt when they were children, and every time he had returned the favour since they were men grown. “Sometimes I hate you so much it is like I should explode from the force of it,” said Jon.

Theon nodded silently. He shifted in his chair.

“I thought that when I beat you, I would be free from it. But I am not. It is worse than before.”

Theon nodded again. 

“I have not known anything else but hate,” continued Jon. “The direwolf has made me hate you most of all.”

“But I did not mean the direwolf to be a slight—”

“You meant the direwolf to be for me. A gift. Nothing like I had ever imagined, or dared to imagine. You became somebody else. And that is why I hate you, Theon Greyjoy. Because you always win, one way or another.”

Jon rose from his chair. He towered over Theon, and in a detached way Theon realised that Jon had never looked down on him before until that very week: once, bloodied and bruised in Jon’s chambers, and second: now. But Theon didn’t feel afraid. He was never afraid. He was a Prince, heir to the Iron Islands. He was calm, composed, collected. He was not sweating and cold, all at once. He did not notice the bulge in Jon’s breeches. He hated that bastard Jon Snow and his audacity to even be living in Winterfell, never mind standing over Theon in Theon’s own chambers. 

Theon stood up. 

He was nearly a head taller than Jon. _That was much better._

“Somebody needs to visit the kitchens,” drawled Theon. He cupped the swelling in Jon’s groin tightly in his hand. “It’ll fall off if you don’t sort it out. I recommend Funna, but there’s a way to do it so as to avoid the awkward conversation with Maester Luwin about moon-tea…”

Jon knocked Theon’s hand away. “ _Fuck you to seven hells, Greyjoy_.”

“Oh…” Theon smiled. It hurt a little, as his jaw was still bruised. “That’s what you want. Well, Snow, you only had to ask. Then you might find yourself a little less angry all the time.”

“Shut up!”

Theon rolled his eyes. “ _Shut up_ ,” he mimicked. “It’s all you ever say.”

“Well, maybe I’d say something different if you weren’t constantly making some remark.”

“Go on, then.” Folding his arms, Theon stared expectantly at Jon. “I won’t say a thing. You have my word.”

A flash of panic passed across Jon’s face. “Well – I don’t have anything to say now…”

“I think you do. You can start with that, for one.” Theon nodded at Jon’s groin. 

Jon flushed a deep crimson. “Stop looking. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“How do you think it makes me feel with you pointing it at me like that?”

“I’m not – _pointing it_.”

“Anybody would think you wanted me to look.” Theon smirked. “Or, more.”

“I swear to the old Gods and the new, Theon Greyjoy, I shall hit you again.”

“No, you won’t.”

Jon paused. “What?”

“No, you won’t hit me again.” Theon took a step forward. Barely twelve inches separated them now. If Theon wanted, he could take hold of Jon at the throat and have him on his back in seconds. It was an intriguing thought; certainly one that made a vivid mental picture. Although, for some reason, Theon’s vision of Jon on his back did not involve fists and blood. It was quite different. “It hasn’t made you feel any better, has it Snow? Beating seven hells from my face like that. You’re not stupid, despite that slack-mouthed expression you go about wearing everywhere. If you did it again you’d just hate yourself.”

“So why do you hate me, Greyjoy?”

Theon’s jaw hardened. “Same reason you hate me. You always win.”

“I never win!”

“ _I’m more Stark than you’ll ever be._ Wasn’t that what you said?”

Jon’s gaze fell to the floor. “I’m not proud of that.”

“It’s true. Just look at you and Robb. I’ve learned to know my place on the outskirts, Snow.”

“Seven hells!” Jon exclaimed. “You forever chastise me for being self-indulgent and here you are, jealous of me because you want Robb to yourself.”

“You fucking imbecile,” replied Theon. “I don’t want Robb to myself. I want _you_. And you’re too proud, too hateful to see that I could give you anything that Robb does. You look at me like shit, Snow; you always have. The fucking Ironborn hostage with no place and no claim.”

“And I belong here, do I?” Jon felt his voice rising. “Ned Stark’s bastard? Don’t tell me you kicked me into the dirt all those years because I _didn’t want to know you_. Come on, Greyjoy: I thought you were a man!”

Theon grasped a fist of Jon’s overclothes in an angry hand. “If you’d not been so fucking proud you could have given me a chance!”

“Get off me!”

“Hit me again, Snow! I swear it by the drowned God, I shall hit back this time.”

And then before he knew what he was doing, and with entirely reckless abandon, Jon lurched forward and smashed his mouth onto Theon’s. It was an ungainly embrace, clashing and inelegant, and both were thrown so slightly off balance that it took a few seconds of fighting one another before their lips aligned and Jon’s tongue found its rough way into Theon’s mouth. When it did, Theon moaned – angrily and wantonly all at once – and his hands found Jon’s wrists where he clasped both, driving Jon backwards until he collided with the wall. Instinctively, Theon ground his hips into Jon’s, realising with a strange sort of detachment that he too had an issue with his breeches.

“Seven hells,” hissed Jon, as Theon’s teeth and lips raked down the side of his jaw and into his neck. His hips bucked forward to meet Theon’s, desperate for the heat and friction.

“Take them off,” growled Theon into Jon’s neck. 

“But what—”

“Now.”

Jon worked his fingers around the laces on Theon’s breeches as Theon did the same to his. “You’re trembling, Greyjoy.”

“If you don’t fucking shut up, I will shut you up,” muttered Theon, his shaking hands fumbling the knots like a green boy. “Gods, Snow. You may be pretty, but you’re not so pretty that you’ll get raped in the night; why are these breeches done up so fast? They’re like the fucking Black Cells. I’ve never seen so many knots…”

“They’re fastened properly, Greyjoy, because we don’t all drop them the minute some girl gives us the eye.” Jon smirked, and realised immediately why Theon enjoyed it so much. “Thought you’d be better at this: all them whores you’ve fucked.”

“Yes, well. It’s a bit different flipping a skirt and turning her over. A lot – _fuck_ – a lot easier.”

“Tough for you that I’m not that easy,” replied Jon. He covered Theon’s shaking, slender hands with his own and all of a sudden the world around them slowed to a stop. Jon captured Theon’s clear eyes in his own grey gaze. Theon’s breath caught in his throat. Fuck, he thought. He was scared. “Let me,” said Jon. His voice was barely a whisper. Slowly and deliberately he undid each knot in the lacing at his waist, never breaking eye contact with Theon as he did so. Theon dragged his sandpaper tongue across his even drier lips. Snow was a pretty looking boy. He always had been. But Gods, how he looked now was something Theon had never seen before. His pupils were so dilated that his grey eyes seemed almost black. And Theon knew that each lacing exposed more flesh, more of those soft, dark hairs that his clumsy fingers had grazed, yet he could not look away from Jon’s gaze, not even to glance downwards for a second.

Jon licked his lips, mirroring Theon. “Do you – do you want to look?” 

“Do you?”

“Maybe we should look at the same time,” replied Jon.

“I hope you’re not easily intimidated, Snow,” said Theon.

Jon directed his smile at the ground, slid his palms down the side of his breeches at his waist, and pushed them to the floor. Theon did the same. And slowly, each not wanting to seem the more eager, they shifted their gaze to take in one another. 

It seemed as though many long moments had passed before either of them spoke.

“Well,” said Theon at length. “Not easily intimidated.”

Jon smiled at the ground again. “Surprisingly free of cock-rot, Greyjoy. I’m impressed.”

“You really know how to charm a girl, Snow.”

“You know me. I’ve always been good with words.”

Theon fisted Jon’s overclothes into his hand and pulled him forwards, grinning into their kiss. It was frantic, needy, desperate; each fighting for control of the other, each needing to be deeper within the other’s mouth. Their cocks were touching too, without the barrier of breeches this time, and Jon had never known a feeling like it. He was used to his own rough, calloused hand; he was familiar with the way he twisted and pulled himself to completion. The sensation of Theon’s cock at his own was something so entirely different that Jon feared he may lose control of himself like a green boy and spend all down his own thigh. Theon’s cock was thick rather than particularly long, which was why, Jon supposed, the whores were so appreciative. But more than anything, it was exceptionally smooth to touch, yet so achingly hard. 

Jon couldn’t help himself. 

He wrapped his hand around Theon’s cock and around his own, bringing them together, desperate to pull at them as though he were eleven again and discovering what everything did. He felt Theon groan into his mouth and thrust his hips forward. 

“Seven hells, Snow,” gasped Theon, breaking the kiss. “Don’t stop doing that, for if you do, I shall fucking strangle you.”

Jon silenced Theon with his rough, wet mouth once more as he sped up the machinations on their cocks. He noticed Theon’s was wet with a slight slickness that Jon recognised well from whenever he handled himself, but all of a sudden he realised what that slickness meant would soon happen and that he was utterly unprepared to deal with it when it was somebody’s else’s rather than his own.

“Snow! I told you not to fucking stop!” Theon’s expression reminded Jon a little of Rickon undergoing a tantrum, but he shook that thought from his head as soon as it had formed. Instead he dropped to his knees, his own cock unbearably hard, and Theon said, “ _What are you doing_?”

“I don’t know,” Jon replied honestly, and took Theon into his mouth. 

Jon enjoyed teasing Theon about that first time for many moons afterwards. “Was it three, or four thrusts you lasted the first time I sucked your cock, Greyjoy?”

“Shut up, Snow,” Theon would mutter. Invariably he’d be lying between Jon’s legs on Jon’s bed (he never got disturbed after dark, as his only visitor tended to be Arya, and they always made sure she was asleep), with Jon’s seed in his arse or on his thigh or smeared across his chin, and Jon’s hands in his hair touching him gently, absent-mindedly. _Jon’s._

He could feel Jon smirk. “We should start calling you Theon Greenjoy.”

“Better than ‘bastard’, bastard.”

“You’ve called me worse when I’ve got my cock up your arse.”

“Wait until tomorrow, Snow, when it’s my turn to have a go on you. Gonna split you in two.” 

“I will welcome it.” Jon’s fingers tightened in Theon’s hair and gave it a rough tug. “If you think you can handle it, of course.”

“Careful, Snow. Talk like that will make me want to have a go at you right now.”

Jon released Theon’s hair with a yawn. “If you hadn’t fucked my cock nearly clean off, Theon, you know I wouldn’t stop you.”

Theon chuckled quietly, stretching back into Jon’s body. “You never call me Theon,” he observed.

“Up until recently I’d never fucked you, neither,” replied Jon. “This is just how things are now.”

**

And then there were many times after that. So many that even Jon lost count which, before Theon, he’d deemed an impossibility. 

“Told you it’s easy to lose track of how many times you’ve fucked,” whispered Theon into Jon’s open lips. He had his hand down Jon’s breeches, wrapped tightly around his cock, and was doing something with his thumb that was making Jon groan like a woman. “Welcome to the club. Gods, Snow, be quiet. This cupboard is tiny and I can barely handle you without making a clamour as it is. Anybody could walk past.”

“Shut up,” breathed Jon. “You were the one who dragged me in here.”

“If you insist on looking at me the way you did across the table this morning, I’m not sure what else you expect to happen.”

“Seven hells, Greyjoy, don’t stop—”

The very first time they’d attempted to go further than hurried rubbing and rutting had been several moons after what they came to refer to as “direwolf day”, and it had been a disaster. Naturally Theon had assumed the position having a comparative wealth of experience in the field next to Jon, but it had soon become apparent that mounting loose whores so as not to get a bastard on them was a markedly different affair than trying the same procedure on a muscled man whose rear maidenhead was more tightly closed than a knot in a fucking Weirwood tree. Theon had become quite tired of Jon’s huffs and puffs because he had been significantly aroused, and Jon should have been a little more grateful that Theon didn’t just ram it in. They’d given up after a while and to his credit, Jon had taken Theon in his mouth and finished him until his spending with the sort of vigour and resolve that told Theon that Jon had made it a personal mission to ensure it was the best he had done it. Snow was like that, Theon was starting to realise. Being the bastard had rubbed off upon him the fortitude and determination that in anything of his own choosing, he would excel. Jon could not choose his name, but he could choose everything else.

Then there was the time that it worked, but it suited Theon to remember it in a particularly specific way. He had allowed Jon to grab his wrist and flip him onto his back. After all, Jon had been beneath him at the time and would have been entirely unable to truly overpower him. He had permitted Jon to wordlessly pin him to the bastard’s bed, push his knees up to his chest, and use his mouth in a way that usually meant Theon had to pay at least three times as much. No whore had got that place inside him before, though, that usually he had to find with his own fingers. But Snow did. And by the Gods was the bastard smug about it.

“What made you do that, with your mouth?” Theon said breathlessly afterwards.

“Felt like it, is all,” Jon replied foggily. His cock lay half-hard on his thigh, a short, glistening streak the only evidence of what Theon could feel trickling rather oddly – but somehow comfortingly – down the cleft of his arse. Snow had a talent for lasting mere moments after spending before falling into such a deep sleep that once Theon had panicked slightly, in case he’d sucked the life out of Jon through his cock. “Why, d’ya like it?”

“It suited me well enough,” Theon replied, in what he liked to remember was an indifferent and casual manner.

“Then it’s your turn next time,” Jon muttered, turning so that his head rested slightly below Theon’s stretched arm. His nose touched the side of Theon’s ribcage. “Because if I don’t get your cock up my arse soon, Theon Greyjoy, all the Gods in Westeros and beyond will know about it.”

As much as it was new to Jon to lose count, then, it was equally as new for Theon to so vividly remember. 

There was the time he became a little carried away when they were sparring, and Jon had been laughing with Robb over some joke he hadn’t heard, and Jon had dodged every lunge Theon threw at him and Robb said, “Greyjoy, are you a maid these days?” and when Jon laughed at that, Theon punched him on the jaw. Robb had to get between them when Jon got immediately to his feet, threw his wooden sword aside, and grabbed Theon by his leather collar. Robb hadn’t been there in the stables at sunset, however, when Jon slammed Theon face first into the wall, hitched his tunic, tugged down his breeches and finished what they’d been unable to thrash out earlier. Whenever Theon thought about that time, and about how close Jon’s lips had been to his ear and the hateful, incredible, filthy things he’d muttered as he’d fucked him, Theon always had to take a moment alone to relieve himself. _“You jealous, spineless coward, Greyjoy. You want to feel wanted? This is all you’re good for, you worthless cunt. I hope you feel my cock in you all day. I hope it’s fucking agony.”_ Theon never lasted longer than a minute before spilling all over his hand.

Of course, afterwards, Snow did his usual thing: _“Gods, Theon, I’m sorry. I – I don’t know what happened for a moment.”_

“Drowned God, Jon. If I didn’t want it, I would have said so. Truth be told I had to punch you, else I would have done you over right there in the courtyard in front of half of Winterfell.” 

“Did I get to you that much?”

“Thought we were past trying to pretend that I am not a jealous creature,” Theon replied. “And anyway, we both know how much you’d have loved that, being fucked for any and all to see. What would your precious brother Robb say? Or our Lady Catelyn.”

Jon’s eyes had darkened then, and for a moment Theon was afraid he had upset him. Then Jon had said, “Seven hells. Imagine it in her chambers. You and me. We’d be damned.”

So there was that time, too, that it suited Theon to look back upon rather fondly. He had never known that Lord Eddard had such a grand bed. When it came to it, both Jon and Theon had been rather reluctant to climb beneath the furs (although each blamed the other for their cowardice), so Theon put Jon back against one of the bedposts, lifted a thigh from the ground, and fucked him until he forgot his own bastard name. It was fortunate that the whole undertaking was so arousing that they both spent quickly, for upon completion they’d nearly been caught by Old Nan coming in to empty Lord Eddard's chamber pot. 

Then there was the time in the Godswood, and probably for the first instance in his life as the Stark’s ward was Theon grateful for having been born on Pyke. If he took them, the Starks' Gods would damn Jon to hell for what they did against the Weirwood tree, but the Drowned God was leagues away so at least Theon was safe.

They’d fucked in the barn, the pantry, almost every available guest chamber; they’d even fucked in the room prepared for King Robert Baratheon when he came to visit from Kings Landing. Theon had revelled in that one. Jon would like to pretend he found Theon’s running commentary more laughable than arousing – _“Come on, Snow – show your Prince how you treat royalty at Winterfell – bend the fucking knee and worship your Prince’s cock”_ – but even Jon couldn’t deny how hard he spilled his seed into his own hand as his lips tightened around Theon’s thrusts. “Fuck – Jon – Gods—” Theon had moaned, and then he too was spilling, and there had been so much of it that day because with all the fuss around the King’s visit, they’d barely touched each other for two whole moons.

“We had better leave,” Jon muttered. He wanted to sleep, but knew that King Robert’s guest chamber was not to place to do it.

“Hold fire, Snow. I can’t move yet.” Theon sat backwards into a chair, his breeches around his ankles and his cock softening on his thigh. 

Jon caught Theon’s eye then. His gaze was probing, questioning. Anxious.

“Don’t ask me,” whispered Jon.

“I have to,” Theon replied. His voice sounded entirely unlike his own.

“You won’t like the answer.”

Theon swallowed hard. “Then let me ask an easier question first.”

Jon nodded.

“When did you first realise?”

“Realise what?”

Theon waved a finger between him and Jon. 

Jon’s heart ached. He said flatly, “It was something always there, is all.”

“Aye, it was,” Theon nodded. “Hatred, bitterness, a fair old lot of jealousy…”

“And that was you, Greyjoy.” Jon smiled weakly. Then he said, “I don’t have the answers you want.” 

“Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?”

Jon’s grey eyes, dark in the candlelight but bright with the words he could not bring himself to say, bore into Theon’s. “Yes.”

“So explain.” Theon ran his hands through his hair, sat forward, stared at the floor. He knew that when he spoke again his voice would crack. He whispered, “come on, Snow. Explain how the bastard boy of Winterfell and the hostage Prince of the Iron Islands grew up hating the very bones of one another until that one day.”

“I—”

“Because, by the Gods, Jon Snow, I’ll be damned if I know. And you were the one who began it all. And now, after bringing this fucking storm into my life, now -- now you are going to leave me.”

Jon felt what few words he had desert him. “The Wall— it’s a chance for me to make something of myself. To do something right.”

“You are making something of yourself!” cried Theon. “This isn’t some sort of game, Jon! It’s always been there, until it grew too big for the space inside me. Do you know how that feels? For years I hated you and hated myself for how much I wanted you. I hate myself even now for trying to stop you. Yet, I hate you more for leaving me.”

Jon rose to his feet, crossed the room to kneel before Theon, and held his face in both his hands. “This is how we live now, Theon. How we have always lived. Forever together. Forever apart.” It hurt Jon to look into Theon’s eyes, but he did so all the same. They were clear and honest eyes. Sad, too, but clear and honest. They always had been, Jon knew. For all the words Theon had ever said, his quiet eyes had spoken far more.

Theon coughed, a disguised sob. “I wish you’d say it, Jon. Just once,” he whispered. “You know what I mean. Because _I do_. I always have.”

Jon touched his forehead to Theon’s and said, “Theon. Gods, I—”

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> I loved writing Theon. Hope I didn't make a pig's ear of it.
> 
> I'm new here; be kind. Or, be an arse: all feedback is welcome. If you thought this was halfway decent and have an idea as to what you'd like to see next, feel free to order it. I work best with prompts and I'm not too proud to bend the knee. Props to any Ramsay requests, because hey: that would be fun.


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